Page 21 of Shadows of Destiny
“If she secures the throne, I will gladly follow her lead as our queen, as will the others.”
“Why were the arach considered kings and queens while those who followed them have all been Lords?” Lexi inquired.
“The first usurper to sit on the throne declared himself the Lord of Dragonia. All those who followed him assumed the name too. I assume it was a way to differentiate themselves from the arach, but they had no reason to do so. They did not belong there, and that already made them different.” Alina closed her eyes and tipped her head to the side. “The Lord calls. I must go.”
“Wait!” Lexi blurted. She still had so many questions and no answers. “Is there anything else I can do? Do I have any other abilities besides the mark of the dragon and fire?”
That strange little smile tugged at Alina’s mouth as she unfurled her wings. “Oh, child, there aresomany things you can do. Now, Ihaveto answer his call.”
“How do I awaken those abilities?”
“That is for you to discover.”
When Alina pushed herself into the air, Lexi rushed toward her, but all she received was a face full of wind as Alina flew away. “Will I see you again?” she shouted after the dragon.
“I hope so.”
And with those final words, Alina opened a portal and left. Hope and frustration warred in Lexi. She’dtalkedto a dragon, but they weren’t any closer to taking down the Lord, and she still had somany questions.
“We can still figure out a way to use the dragons to help us, and now we know more. This doesn’t change our plan,” her dad said. “We still have to recruit an army.”
“We’ll go to the sirens when Lexi is ready,” Cole said.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Alina shookoff the water still clinging to her from her bath as she crept into the dark recesses of her cave. She usually took a bath after being in the Lord’s presence; the man, and the things he commanded them to do, always made her feel dirty.
She longed for a time when that didn’t happen, but she didn’t get her hopes up. Yes, an arach still lived, there was a chance she could free them from the Lord’s tyrannical rule, but it was a small chance.
Taking over Dragonia and getting the usurper off the throne would not be an easy task. But there was an arach and theReaver.
She didn’t know what that meant, had no idea what the arach were thinking or what they intended, other than to protect themselves when they created the magic for the Reaver. But that magic had been unleashed, and if there was ever a time when they needed power, it was now.
She hoped the magic didn’t end up taking a really bad turn and causing the Reaver to create more havoc on the realms than the Lord. But then she recalled the moment between the Reaver and the arach. The way she pulled him back from the brink.
Lexi could keep the Reaver in check… while she remained alive. Alina cursed the prophecy as she weaved through the cave.
The stones brushing against her sides massaged her sore muscles. She stopped to scratch an itch on her back against a particularly jagged rock hanging from the ceiling.
It was impossible to see anything this deep into the cave, but it had been her home since she was nothing more than a young wyrmling fresh from hatching. Her parents and siblings were all gone now, but she remained to take care of her home.
She knew every crevice, rock, and place where air crept in from outside this cave like they were a part of her. And this place was a part of her. It was her home.
She stopped scratching and continued toward her nest in the center of her cave. When she arrived at the center, she stopped to breathe fire onto the torches inside the open doorway.
The flames flickering to life illuminated the cavernous space of the domed room with its high, stone ceiling nearly fifty feet over her head. Jagged rocks that could spear through a dragon hung from above. She didn’t fear the rocks; she’d lived beneath them for thousands of years.
The rocky walls of the circular room were smooth from years of dragons brushing against them. It was filled with laughter when she was young as she tumbled and played with her siblings beneath the watchful eyes of her parents. At one time, six of her family lived in this room.
And then, after they were gone, it became home to her and her mate, Sosho. But someone killed him hundreds of years ago, and she was left alone in her home.
Where love and laughter once filled it, now only silence and loneliness greeted her. She crept closer to the nest in the middle. Her great-great-great-grandparents, maybe even further back than them, built this nest.
It had housed many families over the years and was supposed to have housed hers. Before laying her eggs, she and Sosho spent countless hours gathering more sticks, feathers, blankets, and other soft materials.
But those eggs remained a sad testament to a long-ago time. Alina peered in at the three eggs still safely secured in the center of the nest. All the eggs were a greenish-yellow color, but that had no bearing on the color of the dragons within.
When she first laid those eggs over a thousand years ago, she’d spent many countless hours dreaming about what colors her offspring would be. And she’d spent the past nine hundred years still wondering, but with the certainty that she would never know the answer.
